


Between What I Thought

by Chaerring



Series: This Is His Love, This is Her Body [3]
Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Gen, born a girl! Q, genderqueerness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 02:02:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q doesn't expect anyone to be in the pool before she's set up the cameras there. Of course, James proves her wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between What I Thought

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything, and the title is from "No Light, No Light" by Florence and the Machine
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading this series, and thanks to my pinch hitting friend fro betaing.
> 
> Chronologically, for people following the series, this takes place before the mission to Russia.

It’s intolerably late, or unbearably early depending on which way Q is looking at her clock. In one way, she’s worked seven hours of overtime, in another she’s five hours early for work. She wants to unwind a little before she catches a nap on one of the cots put up for those of them that often stay the night, but the underground bunkers don’t have quite the same state of the art workout equipment or facilities that their damaged building once did. They were being modified and caught up to speed, but fitness equipment for other things beyond field tests was on the back burner for the moment. 

There were exercises she did regularly at home to keep her leg limber since her operations, but a lot of the more strenuous workouts she once did on the treadmill or elliptical are out of her reach, have been since 004’s death. Her preference had become swimming because when she knew her leg was done she could continue to enjoy or exert herself easily with just her arms. 

Being K and becoming Q gave her an unique perspective to monitoring the traffic flow at MI-6 and the additions being completely in the tunnels before they were quite open to the rest of the employees. It was her job, after all, to outfit them with technical security. It was how Q knew at three in the morning that the newly constructed pool was finished, but still needed her personal surveillance touch. 

Q gathers up spare clothing, and bids her night time crew farewell for the moment before heading in the direction of the water calling her name. She leaves her cardigan and glasses in the locker room, along with the clothing she plans to change into, and silently thanks their excellent support staff for making sure the supply of generic soaps is already full. It only takes her a moment to change into a too long set of athletic shorts and her undershirt, since it never occurred to her to bring a swimsuit and permanently claim a locker. There’s a fuzzy moment where she’s double checking she has the right door without her glasses and then she steps through it with a locker room supplied towel over her arm. She’s prepared to slip into the pool and feel the little exhale that comes with the lessened weight of her body. She’s ready for the cool glide and slickness of the water.

Of course, her intentions to relax are shattered completely when she sees the dark figure already there breaking the silence with the quietest strokes. It speaks to the time she spends watching him through shitty foreign surveillance cameras that she can recognize James even without her glasses. She feels like she should have known he was there. As many of his missions that made note of him taking advantage of the ocean or hotel pools while he was waiting for intelligence or the mark, she should have known he would be there before anyone was allowed to be.

Instantly, the place she’d been planning to loosen up in becomes impossibly more complicated. She wants to leave, thinks maybe she should leave, but even the thought of turning around feels like defeat in the bottom of her stomach. She steps forward instead and sits on the edge of the pool slipping her legs in. If she stays on the ground too long it will wreak hell on her leg, but she’s hoping James might take a hint and leave.  
He surfaces in the middle of the pool directly across from her and somehow his eyes are a sharp enough blue that she can see them even surrounded by the pool and missing her glasses. 

“Q.”

The letter rolls off his tongue the same as it always does, but her mother’s voice is suddenly whispering in her ear, making her painfully aware of what she looks like. Her grey undershirt is doing little to hide her small bosom. It’s certainly not thick enough to stop her nipples from standing up in the cool air. Her legs are pale and the dark hair she hasn’t bothered to shave from them in months stands out in a very un-ladylike way. Q doesn’t care. She hasn’t in a long time, but the training is there sometimes, under her skin. 

“007.”

***********************************************

James doesn’t know what to make of Q’s sudden appearance at the pool. It’s even more surprising than the afternoon with Q Branch alcohol and shitty telly. Theoretically he knows Q doesn’t spend all her time on her platform tangled in code, but it’s a completely different thing to see the evidence of it. She looks remarkably undone in a gray cotton shirt and long athletic shorts. 

Out of some sort of compulsion he swims towards her and stops just shy of her toes dangling in the water. He has the strange desire to reach out and curl his fingers around her ankle, not to pull her into the pool, but just to touch. He feels like she’s crossed into his territory somehow, like he’s a shark and she’s dangling bloodied limbs in the water for him to clamp down on. He’s compared to animals all the time, he hears it everywhere, but it’s another thing for him to do it in his own mind. 

James wonders if the door to sleep with her is still open. On a first look he’s pretty sure if he pressed a kiss to her thigh he could insinuate himself in between her thighs and keep working his way upward. At a second, lingering look, though, he sees the bruises under her eyes, the faint lines at their corners and the tension in her exposed neck. It finally occurs him that she hadn’t known he was there before she planned to swim. 

It’s an automatic assumption that everywhere in MI-6 is in under Q’s watchful eye, but it makes more sense that the reason the area isn’t open yet was that she was unable to get cameras built in until the water lines and filters were finished for the pool. He’s caught her off guard by being present when she was intending to come and relax. 

Once he realizes that there’s only one thing for him to do. He doesn’t bother with the stairs, simply moving to pull himself up on the wall next to her. He drips on her, but she doesn’t flinch or move away and give him more space. She stays quiet as he picks up his towel and heads for the locker room.

“It’s all yours, Q.”

She doesn’t thank him, but he hadn’t expressed any sort of gratitude for the afternoon they spent together, either.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, an excuse to put James in a pool, and to talk a little more about Q.


End file.
